Vine & Instagram: So Happy Together?

On June 20, Instagram unveiled its video-sharing feature, accompanied by much fanfare and press coverage. The app’s 100 million users rejoiced at the newfound capability. Tech pundits marveled at its sophistication. It seemed as though everyone had reason to celebrate the heralded arrival of this new service. Everyone except Vine, the popular, Twitter-based video sharing app.

Within hours of Instagram’s big reveal, numerous articles began to pop up heralding the imminent demise of Vine (including our own). Critics reasoned that Instagram’s Cinema stabilization feature, its use of gorgeous filters, and its ability to edit and re-shoot clips would vastly surpass the stripped down, simplified experience provided by Vine.

However, one month later, Vine is still going strong. It hasn’t been ditched by businesses, and it still maintains a powerful market share. This begs the question of whether or not two incredibly similar apps such as Vine and Instagram video can truly coexist, or whether this is a simple aberration.

While these two apps may appear, superficially, to be quite similar, they can actually be tailored to serve up unique experiences in conjunction with one another.

This is primarily due to the apps’ affiliations with various social networks, namely Twitter and Facebook. Twitter has become a rapid-fire source of news, opinions and thoughts, whereas Facebook has established itself as a more grounded, identity-driven online experience.

With this in mind, brands can, and should, use both apps to develop these different facets of their brand identity. Instagram video can be employed to further expound upon and develop a brand’s unique image. For example, an Instagram video, due to its extended length and higher production value, can function almost as a small promotional video for a company. Vine videos, with their inherent brevity and simplicity, can be used as quick statements involving company news or product launches.

Both have a clear place, not only in marketing and business, but also in the world of social media in general. By capitalizing on the unique nature of each of these apps, brands can take advantage of them to their fullest extent and use them in conjunction, rather than using one at the expense of the other.